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Return Of The Film Corner Thread


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9 hours ago, medjuck said:

And? 

I've been watching Hitchcock silents on a PD Roku channel (5-6 of them anyway} and find them all very much worth seeing. Champagne is a bit of a "romantic comedy" and is supposed to be Hitchcock's least favorite of his films, but I liked it. Betty Balfour was great, I thought.

Another good one is Downhill, one of those riches-to-rags stories. And of course there's The Lodger.

Seem like a lot of Hitchcok's British work is in the PD, so copies are easily found, although good prints are not. But a few have been restored (sometimes with scores added that distract from the visual, imo). Any Hitchcock fan who is interested in his technique would be well-served to check them out, if only becuase it's a good look at how this always visual director was that way more or less from the beginning.

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16 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I've been watching Hitchcock silents on a PD Roku channel (5-6 of them anyway} and find them all very much worth seeing. Champagne is a bit of a "romantic comedy" and is supposed to be Hitchcock's least favorite of his films, but I liked it. Betty Balfour was great, I thought.

Another good one is Downhill, one of those riches-to-rags stories. And of course there's The Lodger.

Seem like a lot of Hitchcok's British work is in the PD, so copies are easily found, although good prints are not. But a few have been restored (sometimes with scores added that distract from the visual, imo). Any Hitchcock fan who is interested in his technique would be well-served to check them out, if only becuase it's a good look at how this always visual director was that way more or less from the beginning.

Thanks.  I've DVR'd a bunch of old Hitchcocks that were on TCM. Time to start watching them.  

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The really early ones (that have survived, anyway) threw me off at first, because the stories are very seldom things you'd associate with "Alfred Hitchcock", murder, suspense, all that. But they do make for good movies, I think, if that expectation is put away. And as you no doubt know, silents are their own thing, especially ones that have no score added. That's an adjustment, but one worth making. At least it was for me. The old music business adage that "people hear with their eyes" is not without merit, although my wife hates a fully silent movie. There's no doubt a lot of discussion to be had about ear vs eye when it comes to entertainment media.

For a long time, the earliest Hitchcock film I knew was The 39 Steps, certainly a masterpiece by any standard, but by no means "early". Look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock_filmography

He had been involved in making movies in one role or another for 15 years before he did that one, and had already made the original The Man Who Knew Too Much!

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